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Hamas over the weekend vehemently rejected comparisons with the brutal Islamist horde known as the Islamic State (formerly ISIS), but then turned around and mercilessly executed at least 22 residents of Gaza who were suspected of “collaborating” with Israel.

Last Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting American official that “Hamas is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas. …These are both branches of the same poisonous tree. The free world, the democracies have to stand together against this terrorism.”

“We are against the killing of innocent civilians,” Mashal claimed, even as Hamas continued to rain upon southern Israel mortars and missiles, one of which killed 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman.

Even sidestepping the Hamas charter that calls for the eradication of the Jewish people, the Palestinian group’s behavior inside Gaza over the weekend puts it more in line with ISIS than Mashal would like to admit.

The Islamic State has become notorious for brutally killing anyone and everyone that doesn’t support and join its vision for the future of the Middle East. Hamas has been only slightly more forgiving in molding the population of Gaza.

The men executed by Hamas in Gaza over the weekend were suspected (only suspected, there were no trials) of “collaborating” with Israel. That could mean many things, from providing information to Israeli military forces targeting Hamas officials, to merely maintaining contact with Israeli Jews.

Following the executions, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, assistant to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was forced to agree with Netanyahu that Hamas was the spitting image of ISIS.

When Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, it practiced a similar savagery by throwing Palestinian Authority officials and activists off the roofs of tall buildings.

PHOTO: Palestinian “collaborators” with Israel are lined up against a wall for execution (Reuters)

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